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By Chukwudi Abiandu

Camara Laye once wrote that “flattery is the praise singer’s stock in trade.” Nothing better captures the tragedy of leadership in Nigeria today, a nation where truth is stifled by the drumbeat of sycophancy and flattery has become a political strategy.

From the corridors of Aso Rock to state government houses and local government councils, every leader is surrounded by a choir of praise singers, political courtiers who tell their bosses what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. They call failure “vision,” corruption “strategy,” and repression “strong leadership.” For them, lying is loyalty and criticism is betrayal.

The result? Leaders are out of touch with the realities of their people.

When a government policy hurts the poor, these flatterers insist it is “bold reform.” When insecurity spreads, they spin it as “strategic patience.” And when the people cry, their voices are drowned by the chorus of sycophants calling the oppressor “a man of the people.”

This is how truth dies, not with a gunshot, but with applause.

Every administration in Nigeria seems to breed its own army of “attack dogs” and “media gladiators,” men and women whose job is not to inform, but to intimidate; not to clarify, but to confuse. They do not serve the public; they serve power. And in serving power blindly, they help destroy it from within.

Sycophancy is not harmless, it is a form of corruption. It builds a wall between leaders and the governed. It prevents feedback, kills accountability, and turns leadership into theatre. Leaders who feed on flattery soon become prisoners of propaganda, mistaking praise for performance and social media noise for public trust.

The tragedy is that by the time the applause fades, the leader has lost both credibility and connection with the people.

Those in power must therefore pause and reflect. They must weigh what their praise singers tell them against the hard realities outside their convoy windows. A wise leader listens not to those who shout the loudest but to those who speak the truth, however uncomfortable.

As Nelson Mandela once warned, “A leader who does not listen will soon be surrounded by people who have nothing to say worth hearing.”

Nigeria is paying dearly for this sickness of power; a disease spread by praise singers and sustained by the silence of those who know better. Until our leaders learn to value honesty above flattery, we will keep mistaking propaganda for progress and sycophancy for service.